I think it been a long time again. I’m sat in the restaurant at lake louise having some lunch. I’m on a pre course level the snowboard instructor level 2. I think I’m becoming accustomed to the cold a little, yesterday it was -10 and felt almost warm! Monday they couldn’t even open the lifts because it’s was over thirty below. People say this is freak cold for this early in winter, but so good for getting used to it. I tend to lose feeling in my toes after twenty minutes outside, and frostbite comes in around ten.
So it hasn’t snowed in a while, just nice and sunny, the sun not feeling warm. But everybody is waiting for the next snow, after all snow is what we came for.
After being here around 5 weeks, alan and I finally have a place to move into, so that’ll end my almost 8 months of homelessness. It’s unfurnished so were trying to find our furniture online at no cost. It’s been done, so doable. I can’t wait to have a home.
So we decide to stay here for the winter, and have season passes for the local hills, so we are totally committed to Banff, expensive as it is.
I have a definately job lined up for January onwards, but only part time, so I’m still looking. But instructing is what I’ve been working towards, so excited!
Most of the time here is spent cold, on the snow, drinking, eating, and having lots of fun meeting new people.
Oh and one bad thing, I failed my level 1 for ski instructing. I passed the teaching but failed the technical skiing. It was pretty ambitious taking the course having barely skied In ten years. So there is a another course next week so I have to get practicing, and make sure I pass this time.
I guess last thing is ???

Photos; cheese, dice and drinks, bingo, robs new car, elk in town, more bingo, me riding, circular rainbow and my leg bruise after landing on a tree

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So we’re in calgary and our odometer shows a figure of 175,000 which means we’ve driven ten thousand miles around north America!

ok so i just tried to make the route in google maps, and google maps couldn’t manage it, it found it too big and the page crashed, wicked google!

i have had enough driving for now, and we’re only 1,700 miles from where we started in Los Angeles, but we did take the scenic route, which has been great fun. i don’t think i need to recap here, as everything we have done is down below in this blog. i just have to show some photos!

i’m sat in some dingy econolodge, the radiator wouldn’t turn off, so we have the air conditioning on, don’t tell the environment, but somebody has removed all radiator controls, and the only other option was to sleep with the door open, but maybe the -4 outside would make it too chilly in here.

alan’s just woken now, so i guess time to do stuff.

regina was cool, we had no number or address for the guy who we were staying with, but we did know where he worked, and it all worked out as we arrived when he did, and he even got the night off. so we went and had dinner and saw some bars, alan picked up this pretty but really stupid girl and well it was fun.

yesterday we headed off out on the road for what was the hardest, most boring drive of the trip. we had 500 miles on prairie lands to cross. we had to do all we could to keep from passing out while driving. this involved absolutely horrible music, throwing grapes out of the window to have them crash on the front of the car and general being annoying to each other, but we made it here to calgary to drive past a bar showing the kiwi’s playing wales on tv.

so rugby, pie mac and cheese and a pint made for a nice finish to the day.

there seem to be a noticable number of english, ozzy and kiwi people around here, and i guess it’s the close proximity to the snowy mountains.

so alan has to goto customs and beg for his ski bag to be released and then off we go to banff, can’t wait, mountains, snow, and the lifts open wednesday!!!

photos: alan trying to play patience in the car, our greek breakfast yesterday and the nothingness expanse we drove across yesterday. i notice the iphone photos aren’t great quality, buggar!

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Alan and I have just been to the mall in Winnipeg, narrowly escaping the busyness. I bought a cover for my iPhone because I have seen so many iPhones with smashed screens. I went for the recycled plastic option. We also got some thermals, it’s going to be a cold winter.
So winnipeg was interesting. Out couchhost was a fun girl, plenty of time having recently been made redundant, along with most of her crazy friends but we spent most of the time partying, there isn’t much else to do in that town. It is the grain trading capital of north America.
And the people there are crazy, many of whom walk around making wierd sounds, screaming or talking to themselves. There’s too much winter, no excitement or hope, not even any population growth, the gun crime capital of Canada so we are told.
So we are now in the real prairies, you can see for miles and miles, forward the road dissappears on straight to the horizon and to the sides are endless yellow field where crops grew in the summer.
It’s so straight and boring that they have giant signs to keep you mind active like odometer checks. But no worries if you fall off the road asleep, there’s nothing to hit.
It’s barely above zero degrees and they’re still harvesting.
So wawa was no too interesting, lots of goose statues.
Thunder bay, out host wasn’t too talkative until we got him a bit drunk, and he hit on us.
So the most important thing we did was go to an employment centre to canadianise our resumes. We’ve applied for several jobs now. Not much response yet.
The car is super dirty because I decided to do some off roading just to wake me up from the boring drive.
Oh and I got myself a lovely yellow hat, mmm warm

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Nouvelle Orleans.
It’s interesting to say the least. The experience thus far has been great, almost overwhelming.
So we drove through the back roads, swamps, alligators, needing the toilet like no other day. We drove the most zig zag route into here in search of interest.
Our host is intriguing, involved in politics here, half Jewish, half catholic, half Italian, totally American and gay. I/we haven’t had so many/strong discussions that aren’t bullshit in a long time, well as brothers, ever.
We’ve had a great tour of town, and local beers, and some else.
We watched a football game, on TVs. We had a bar crawl, being that each bar that we went to wasn’t fun enough for supporting the local college team. We met people, well Vincenzo knows everybody in town. We met the bucket man, who sang alan and I a sang inside a bucket!
In the end we came back home, I guess at 11pm ish to cook gumbo, and for me, pasta. The other couchsurfer came back from being musical, and together we chatted away while cooking failed. But we drank the chili wine. We chatted about life and Krishna, and lucid dreaming, and ioraska(maybe I can’t spell that), and katrina, and new Orleans, and now everybody is laying to sleep in the dark but me.
I think it’s time, gone five hours of cooking, eating and chatting to meet the zzzzz’s

Up to you.
It’s late and I’m trying to wait as late as possible before going to sleep. I have a Super thin sleeping bag, no pillow and no roll-mat/matress so it could be as uncomfortable as when we slept in yosemite. A few beers and thirty odd rounds of rummy and I don’t quite feel ready for this.
Today has been cool, so cool that it didn’t sink in until it was over.
So to start off we sent sone post and bought breakfast, uneventful, buuut then we went to drive and again the car wouldn’t turn over. Luckily enough the only garage in town was 2 doors down so we mosied on over to get a jump, and change of battery, lovely mechanic, red neck but friendly. He was even doing up an English taxi from 1960, pretty cool. So now we shouldn’t, hopefully, have and more car worries.
After that drama was over we drove up to Grand Canyon national park, and did the touristy stuff, photographs, rock hopping n yeh, got sick of it, and we drove south.
We enjoyed the sunset over Sedona, magical.
So now to camping and getting to sleep.

Not quite but it’s been a fun night.
We’ve just been to a ball game. My first time, I’ve just about learned baseball. And it wasn’t quite perfect, the LA Dodgers lost, to the San Francisco Giants, but there was a firework display afterwards. It’s interesting, like cricket, long, slowish, basically junk food, beer and stuff.
So yesterday we decided upon a car, if you can consider something of that size a car. We have bought a Chevrolet Suburban. It’s enormous, five and a half litre engine, comfortably seats seven people, or for us two and our ski/board gear. It’s a big black gas guzzling monster, and it’s awesome! We had trouble with insurance, but a nice Italian lady on a phone helped a lot after I had a nice chat with her.
So we’re set to start cruising, off into the world we go tomorrow.
Oh and we went shopping down Melrose avenue, never got what we were after but did get stuff and some good burgers.

Super tired, jet lagged still I suppose.
Breakfast included orange juice made from oranges picked from the tree in the garden no longer than twenty minutes earlier, couldn’t be much fresher or yummier!
Today alan, gunnar and I have been driving around from city to city in Los Angeles. We were on the road nine hours, and have had some experiences. The car sales men, and even nice ladies seem to have no clu about cars, being incapable or unwilling to explain issues like such as why the 4 wheel drive or air conditioning doesn’t work, or even being unable to speak English. So there has been one promising Chevrolet Yukon. We’ll have to see what options there are tomorrow.
The flight was long, yum food, plenty o’ booze and films; Star trek, Fast and furious, Fifty dead men walking and Terminator salvation. I’d say watch star trek, but the best was the indi Irish film, fifty dead men walking, so find it and watch it.
It’s cool to be back in the sun, and it still hasn’t hit in that we’re on holiday, let alone left Europe for who knows long. I guess this is just life.
And Connie and Gunnar are lovely.
Who wants to walk the great wall of china with me?
Time for a barbie.

Cooling off.
Dad, Alison, Paul, sophie, alan and I are near Salisbury at the maybe’s house in the country. We had a nice nature hunt in wellies. Then snooker, the oldies being smashed by the kids. A lovely home meal was followed by a crazy three a side familiy on on family ping pong match, which was pretty chaotic. Five balls at once is hard to follow.
So what better way than to have a sauna/swim session? So ultimatly I feel tired but freshhhh.
My walk Tuesday was great, I wrote a poemish thing. Then sweated a whole load and ate lots of free fruit.
Wednesday involved doing Very little. Dad alan and I saw district 9 in letchworth cinema, nice, comfy, cheap. I must say that the film I worth watching, it’s a new idea, with good morals. The basics are refugee treatment, and solidarity and freedom, see it, it’s wicked!
Yesterday we had a memorial for Ian/Nam, with some old family friends, families who we grew up with, nanny, some of his school friends, and family. It was emotional, but wonderful. Again yo hear such wonderful things, atop a hill under the sun was great. Being talked into taking part was definately worth it, it was cleansing, and left me feeling great.
Afterwards, some came back to dads for dinner, and it was the first time that us Home Farm kids were together in donkey’s years.
So to bed and a day of who knows what tomorrow.

So I’m on a bumpy easyjet flight to Manchester. It’s not bad, I’m sat by the wing exit so have plenty of leg room
On the way through airport security I removed everything from my pockets, removed my belt, and still I beeped passing through the scanner. So while the security guard tried to pat me down, it got tricky as these shorts have no hope of staying up without my belt or hand to hold them, so all the security guards had a good joke on me.
On Wednesday, Nic and I headed down to Milan for the afternoon. The day started of with nic having a huge hangover and me a little worse for wear, but driving over the Saint Bernard pass was so stunning I felt great. So awesome that I had to keep stopping to take in the views. Driving across Italy was smooth and fast as usual. We chose to do the park and ride, thanks to wikitravel’s advice.
Milan is pretty cool, didn’t seem too touristy, but was pretty while modern also. I had liked to find some sunglasses, as I’d like some with prescription lenses. But like with current spec trends, I’m not a fan and never found anything, I’ll have a look in London, but may have to wait until LA.
Pizza and cocktails ended the day by the canal before heading back to Verbier.
Yesterday ian and I did some stuff, like cleaning the car, photographing it, then going for a joy ride up the mountain. It was super strange to be up there where I’ve spent so much time in the snow. It got a bit steep but nothing my car couldn’t handle, maybe a little something for the vertigo. We saw some marmots, odd creatures, take lots of photos, and made the car all dusty again.
The week I have been surrounded by Wii’s, but I prefer doing the real sports.
Oh and I’ve been having trouble with my ears, especially my right ear. They’ve been blocked, I’ve had trouble hearing, and it even got to the point where my ear was hurting. I’ve tried ear drop to see if I could clear them that way, but it on improved for a day. My toncils have been swollen and sore also, so I think I’ll have to try and see a GP when I find one. And my ears are having issues at altitude now.
So no more car now. It’s been great fun to have a comfortable, powerful, head turning car, but I’m not sad to lose it. I’ll certainly think twice before buying such a luxury toy in the future.
Maybe we can find something fun to drive in America.
So to the lake district with dad this evening, a nice walk tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be nice and fit for it after exercising at altitude the past days.

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After the sleep lacked night, I woke up to a beautiful sunrise over the channel. Then off to the boat and I decided not to use the gps. I lost confidence in her, and prefer to find a more interesting route. Not to mention the fun of getting lost.
It was a beautiful drive to Belgium, Luxembourg, across to Germany, back to France along the Rhone, into Germany with some flower picking. There I got some speed up, but got a spot of trouble when I filled up the tank and my cards wouldn’t work, but thanks to martin I got away. I came into Switzerland just before sunset, which made for a stunning drive from Basel to Bern and Lausanne, a wonderful fun drive down, akin to watching Top Gear.
Sunday morning nic and I went for a dizzying walk, and even saw some marmots!
Monday I went to the gym, didn’t notice the time and left two and a half hours later aching and tired.
I went to see harriet and cedric, then back to nic and toto’s for a dinner party, yum yum, but couldn’t wait for sleep.
Now nic and I are doing errands, working on getting the car ready to sell.